The bomb found under the car of Pakistani journalist and TV talk show host Hamid Mir earlier this week highlighted the urgent need for governments to act to ensure the safety of journalists.

Only a month ago, at a symposium on this issue in London, Mir was telling of the death threats he and his colleagues were receiving daily. Messages were being sent directly to journalists' mobile phones and email accounts, because of their support for the blogger Malala. There was no evidence that the state was doing anything to protect the recipients.

“Where are the state security agents?” Mir asked at the time: “Why are they not intercepting these threatening messages and protecting journalists?”

That day Mir put his signature, alongside those of 40 media organizations and individual journalists, to the “London Statement”, an eight-point declaration that condemned killings and attacks against journalists and expressed dismay over the lack of government action.

With four days to go before the Ukrainian parliamentary elections on 28 October, the outlook for freedom of expression in the country’s media remains decidedly mixed. As the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva today starts the second cycle of its Universal Periodic Review, Reporters Without Borders (who, like WAN-IFRA, have this year compiled a report on the subject) have ‘sounded the alarm’ over conditions surrounding freedom of information which, it states, ‘have worsened to such a degree that the country is at a turning point’. Ukraine has long been a concern for free speech campaigners; background to the ongoing international dialogue can be found in recent posts on this blog here and here, along with the full report from the delegation sent there in July of this year.